What Does 1 Corinthians 10:19 Mean?
What then do I say? That an image is anything, or that what is set apart and offered to an image is anything?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing?THE KEY
The image can lack godhood in itself while the offering made before it still carries a real spiritual direction.
THE MEANING
The question separates the image from the act around it: the object does not possess godhood simply because it is called an idol. Yet the offering is not necessarily empty; the next line names what the act joins.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that an image has divine power within itself simply because people treat it as divine.
THE ROOT
εἴδωλον
eidōlon
GROWS FROM
εἶδος
eidos
Form, visible shape, appearance, what is seen.
The Greek word εἰδωλόθυτον (eidōlothyton, “thing offered in sacrifice to an idol”) contains εἴδωλον (eidōlon, “image” or “idol”). English separates the two phrases, while Greek keeps the image inside the name of the offering: the image may not be a god, yet the act is still directed somewhere.
ALSO GROWS
eidō: To see or perceive
εἴδω
This verb shares the seeing-root beneath the idea of something known by its visible form.
eidos: Form, shape, appearance
εἶδος
The idol is a visible form; its appearance does not make it divine.
eidōlothyton: A thing offered in sacrifice to an idol
εἰδωλόθυτον
This compound carries the word for “idol” into the name of the offering, linking the image and the act.
THE PATTERN
A visible image can lack divinity in itself while an offering made before it still has a real spiritual recipient.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.They slaughtered to demons, not to God; to gods they had never known, to new gods come up from nearby, before whom your fathers did not shudder.But I say that what the nations offer, they offer to demons and not to God, and I do not wish you to become sharers in common with demons.THE THREAD
But I say that what the nations offer, they offer to demons and not to God, and I do not wish you to become sharers in common with demons.The word εἰδωλόθυτον (eidōlothyton, “thing sacrificed to an idol”) in verse 19 joins “image” to “sacrifice.” Verse 20 uses θύουσιν (thyousin, “they sacrifice”), from θύω (thyō, “to sacrifice”), and names the act’s spiritual recipient.
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